Well thanks to the esteemed mister Ben Cressy, I have been simultaneously guilted and flattered into finally taking it up again and letting the world–at least the 10 or so people who read this–know what’s been happening to me for the past two months in the Rift Valley. I’ve decided that there’s far too much to cram into one entry and still retain a coherent thread of thought. So I’ve decided to break up my reflections of practicum into chapters, which will appear as I feel so inclined and in no particular order, chronological or otherwise. So enjoy the first, entitled: Travel.

Chapter One: Travel

Since I last left off I was still in Rwanda. That now feels like ages ago, as well it should. I’ve not only left Rwanda since then, but I have spent time traversing the entire country of Uganda, from Kitgum to Entebbe to Kapchorwa to Gulu. For the majority (all eight) of you for whom those names mean nothing, it’s a pretty wide spread, ranging from the border of Sudan to the border of Kenya to the Rwanda/DRC border to Lake Victoria.

I’ve been everywhere, man.

Lake Victoria

All that travel meant a lot of time in transit. Hours upon hours riding Kampala Coach, Matatus, the FHU company car, an Eagle Air puddle jumper, on the metal rack of a 100cc dirt bike (sore for days), with Godwin the unofficial taxi driver of Food for the Hungry, pushing a van up a washed out “road,” blazing a trail in another mzungu’s land rover through the jungle of Mt. Elgon National Park,  et plenty alia. That may sound like a drag to some of you, but I’ve come to find traveling very therapeutic. The feeling of being in motion, even slow, turbulent motion over the marshes of central Uganda, is a thrill. Not those anxious adrenaline soaked experiences we call thrills, but the warm pulsating and expectant kind of thrill. The thrill of merely doing, realized in moving. Now, granted, arranging travel is stressful, and time spent in a particular location feels like a scramble to make the most of it, but when you’re relegated to sitting halfway on the vinyl middle seat in the quad cab of a Toyota Hilux for two more hours of dirt roads, squished between two Africans and the only other American you’ve seen for weeks, in equatorial heat, the only thing keeping you sane is your still unhindered ability to sit, stare, and contemplate. You submit to “Africa Time,*” and let go of your illusion of control. You celebrate the four day weekend you unexpectedly get after your ride to work, scheduled to arrive on Sunday, fails to make it until Tuesday. From the illusory safety of a passenger seat, you can get away without having your wits at the ready, which is a luxury when you’re already at your wit’s end.

From a car you see things unseen. From a plane much more so. As much I already love flying, riding in a twin turboprop putt putt plane to and from Pader, my practicum location, was something uniquely spectacular. Sure, the British Airways 747 that got us from Phoenix to London, and from there to Entebbe flew higher, faster and smoother than our intra-national flights within Uganda, but something is lost in the grandeur of 30,000ft, evaporating among the cirrostratus and contrails. Those sights are too much to take in for the human mind, and from within the sensory diving bell of the Boeing’s great fuselage, all the spectacle of the 50-below outside seems distant, as though watching it on TV. Trying to appreciate it at once is like trying to remember the face of a loved one you only just left. There is too much information to draw upon to construct beauty. So you watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the screen before you instead.

The Putt Putt

But God bless the putt putt plane. Flying in one of these cans is an existential experience, without the high church airport rituals of security checkpoints, removing your shoes as you are proved without sin to enter the holy of holy terminal, casting your burdens to a mysterious inner sanctum, trusting in Southwest almighty that your stuff will arrive with you, entering the labyrinthine passages only when your name has been seen in the holy book of the manifest, attentively hearing the flight attendant priestesses recite the liturgy of the exit locations, and finally being welcomed on the holy tarmac by the grand minaret of the control tower, giving thanks, world unending, Amen. But how different an experience is the puddle jumper! It is like those rapturous revelations of the divine that only occur during tribulation, great joy, or humbling defeat. It is the conversion experience of air travel.

Marshes of Central Uganda

It is the third Kierkegaardian stage of existence intermingled with its own despair found in the intimacy between you, the plane, and the pilots. All fear is felt at once between the three, as is all joy. One perceives the turbulence inside, rather than out. Phantom sensations of aluminum wings being tickled by the rushing wind and warmed by the unveiled sun fire from synapses you never knew you had. You look forward to the open cockpit and take a bearing of the dirt strip before you.  And outside of that window is a sight so perfectly situated between transcendent and mundane that it practically erupts with meaning. As though at once with your own thoughts, the gear comes down, the speed brake goes up and you land.

And it gives you just enough time to think and something to think about. Outside the window isn’t a story that like an orange hasn’t already been juiced of all it’s meaning into convenient, marketable form. Outside is just a thing, a ripe view asking you to squeeze it with your own hands. Here’s a piece of my journal which took me two plane rides to complete, just reflecting on the world outside:

Right now I am flying over the Ugandan countryside in a tiny little twin turboprop puddle jumper. Correction: I am actually over a beautiful crystal- blue lake fringed with lacy bright green marshes cut by canals, forming patterns like cracks in broken glass. Farther inland are knobs of earth and rock, tufted with dark green tree clumps. The deeper part of the lake falls into a midnight blue-blackness of stomach-knotting depth, with green wisps of algae floating atop. Another atmosphere. Between the marsh and the knobs of rock are the inhabited grassy flats. Farms irregularly shaped fit snugly like a jigsaw puzzle, but stitched by red sandy dirt roads into a quiltwork.

We fly through a cloud, informing me of our velocity.

Smaller lakes break up the plains and hills. Steel roofs of an unknown town glisten in the distance, barely discernible as the land melts into the atmosphere at the horizon. Green tufts disperse into brighter grass deltas which melt into brown algae, swirling unmixed into clear, dark water.

The engines hum and roar slightly out of phase in stereo, but the rarified air dulls the hearing. Ears pop. The stomach lurches and disappears through turbulent cloud banks. It’s the rainy season. A perfectly quadrilateral stand of trees demands a second look. A rare forest reserve in the plains. The plane seats twenty, but five ride today. I stretch my legs out to the next seat. The town still twinkles, more obscure than before, behind us like a mirage. A stubborn white fist of rock stands alone among the ancient red soil, the remains of its brother mountains, as it patiently awaits its own inevitable dissolution. The land is a sea of soil–melted mountains of forgotten heights, untold epics; Their unyielding masses of geological hubris slowly massaged into oblivion by the compliant yet persistent suggestions of wind and water.

Out of the death of grandeur–from it’s dust–came life. Cold splendor crumbled into a cradle bedded with the dust into which the Creator breathed the spirit. From the very dust that clings to my clothes, nostrils, back of throat came a creation destined to worship, covenant, and image the inspiring One. The Lord God, YHWH Elohim, formed man from the dust of the ground, adamah, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul. An aerial view of a fallen Eden, not unlike one vantage of the Creator himself, hovering over the waters.

Reminding me we still exist

I’m about to embark on the three-day journey of posh air travel to get back home. I don’t foresee any more revelations of that sort in the environment of the modern transcontinental aircraft, calculated to curb deep thought with recycled air, in-flight entertainment, and teeny bottles of table wine. Ho hum.

But not all is lost, folks. Just be sure to ride a little plane before you die.

Peace.

*The term Africa Time is a controversial one which means whatever time is stated plus between typically three and seventy-two hours. The controversy arises from the uses of it which imply something negative about African culture or work ethic. The term as I use it, however is simply a statement of fact, because any sort of plan made on the continent is at the mercy of the whims of rain washing away dirt roads, and cars breaking down without spare parts, and the absurd amount of deadly traffic faced anywhere in an Afrian city, as well as the African’s delightful (albeit annoying to my own sensibilities) way of valuing hospitality and conversation over any form of time keeping.

These were Catholic churches that had served as places of refuge for thousands of Batutsi and moderate Bahutu fleeing the violence that exploded in the spring of 1994. While the precise figures of those murdered within church walls and on the grounds remains unknown–as are many of the details of the genocide–the figure is placed conservatively at well over 10,000 between just these two churches. Of those within the churches, fewer than a handful survived. There were but a few children who managed to appear believably dead among the bodies.

Today, the churches appear much as they did in the spring of 1994. There are no glass exhibits and manicured gardens. Shelves cradle skulls of countless victims bearing the mortal wounds characteristic of blunt force trauma and machete strikes. The weapons, both makeshift and purposeful, remain strewn on the ground. The welded steel doors that had been forced open remain in their ribbonned and melted state. And victims’ clothes remain hanging on rafters, hanging on windowsills, hanging along the inside of every wall, covering every concrete pew, covering the ground of the choir pit, hanging and encroaching every walkway, denying any visitor the benefit of leaving untouched by death; leaving without rubbing shoulders with hate; leaving unsullied by the very dirt in which these lived, feared, died, and were buried.

One is buried among them.

Terminal 5 of London.

It has been quite a while since my last post, and I feel like I have to cram quite a bit in now. I think it’ll be best to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Kids at Entebbe Airport.

Finally, after days of flying, we landed in Entebbe, Uganda after our last long redeye flight from Heathrow. Entebbe is just south of Kampala. The contrast between takeoff at one shiny, glitzy, epitome of a western airport and landing beside a cattle field was unbelievable. The Entebbe airport was also not very air-port-y. It looked maybe like a rail station in the US. Very small, very utilitarian, with some ads and a few shops. Kind of refreshing actually. At the airport we met with our driver, Patrick, who turned out to be some kind of superhuman for being able to maneuver our tiny bus through impossibly small holes at white knuckle speed. From that bus we got our first street level view of the country.

UN Hangars in Entebbe

Life and decay in Uganda.

Before heading to Rwanda for the beginning of our semester, our group went on a three-day safari in Queen Elizabeth game park in southwestern Uganda. The park is a couple hours south of the equator. We stayed at two hostels, Mweya and Simba, each replete with cold showers, indoor wildlife and, yes, squatty potties.

Squatty Potty.

It was amazing to see an equatorial sunrise morning after morning. Each one is so spectacular. The enormous red sun simply leaps into the sky. You would have to see it to believe it. The pictures do the experience absolutely no justice.

Just one of many epic sunrises.

The place is teeming with animals. I expected to have to at least look kinda hard to get a glimpse of things, but the place is like a city for animals. It’s straight up crowded with fauna. We saw zebra, cape buffalo (the most dangerous savannah animal), all kinds of antelope, mongooses, tons of warthogs (including those who just hung out around our hostel in Mweya), a baboon who also roamed the grounds scaring Laura, hippos… …mating… …which was awkward… lions (the main attraction which ended up being really boring), and FINALLY… the most exciting of all: HYENAS!

Up close with Hyena #1

Angry Elephants

Japanese Safety Instructions?

Hippos Bangin' ... and Noel

Friday, we crossed the border from Uganda into Rwanda. The drive was amazing. I pretty much just sat by the window quietly watching the rolling grassy hills become towering forested mountains. It is really difficult to explain the smells, sights, and tactile experiences in one country let alone the transition between them. The faces of people seemed to subtly change also. I can’t place just how, but they did.

Southern Uganda.

Getting through Rwandan customs as quickly as we did was miraculous. The drive through Rwanda was quite epic. Kudos again to Patrick for being able to switch to driving on the right side. The place is nothing but rolling mountains with wide grassy shallow valleys in between.

Through mountains in southern Uganda.

We have since arrived in Kigali, the capitol city of Rwanda, and my mind has had so much sensory input and my skin so much sun that it’s very hard for me to process it all. We were kindly shown around town by some students and teachers from the area yesterday. I went to church with one of them, Stany, this morning at a local Pentecostal church, which to my great surprise, was a little more toned-down than the Charismatic churches I’ve been to in the US. I wasn’t even asked to speak even though a) I’m a mzungu and I am expected to have all kinds of western wisdom and b) I was wearing a tie, which as I now know, are only worn by pastors. Phew. Even though the service was in Kinyarwanda, Stany was kind enough to write out the important points of the sermon in english and show me the scripture readings. I really enjoyed the message once I knew what it was, and the worship was fantastic. I might just have to go back next week.

Alright, this blog post has taken FOREVER on account of all the photos, so I should go do something off the internet, like play with the two dogs here, who by the way are in love like I’ve never seen two dogs. Au revoir! Murabeho!

Thunderstorm in Phoenix. Need I say more?

Dear World,

Traveling sucks. Well, okay that needs qualification. 24 hours of in-air time, coupled with literally days of sitting-around-airport/ground transport time sucks. Being hungry, caffeine deprived, sleep deprived, and unable to do anything about it ’cause of your medicine (which also makes you dizzy) sucks. Having two redeye flights in a row compounded by jet lag sucks. Enough of this.

Would I trade it for anything? I would do it several times over. Take your best shot shiny consumerist airport culture! RAAAH!

Enough of that, too. Clearly, since we are in London, we finished orientation in Phoenix, AZ. I think having that put me at ease a lot. I get a pretty good vibe from the group, and think I’m excited for all the potential conflicts to explode and storm (thanks, KG) and resolve into something bigger, faster, stronger, and generally more rad. And I’m good at reading groups. I’m a professional. Just sayin’.

Mmkay, now that the medicine has had time to unseat my equilibrium and settle down, I am going to go eat a long awaited dinner. Peace from London.

Plenty of friends and relatives have given me some interesting one-line snippets of advice before I run off to another continent. It occurred to me that I should compose a compendium of it all for our collective enjoyment and enlightenment. There is no guarantee that I will take this advice, or that I even think it’s good advice, but these are all the things I have actually heard from people’s lips. Here goes:

“You will never come home.”

“Come back.”

“f/8 and be there.”

“Remember to take your doxy.”

“…Don’t always take your doxy.”

“Don’t drink the water.”

“…Drink the water anyway.”

“Make good choices.”

“Don’t get pregnant.” (really.)

“Don’t pass up rafting the Nile.”

“Get to Ethiopia however you can.”

“Drink lots of coffee.”

“Say yes to hospitality–even when it’s too much.”

“Take a boda-boda, even if they tell you not to.”

“Stay off the wireless…get out of the guest house.”

“Don’t do too much schoolwork.”

“Prayer works in Africa…and not the way we pretend it does here.”

“Don’t take the first price you hear.”

“Don’t take the second.”

“Take about the sixth.”

“Take me with you.”

Good advice, eh? If you’ve got any more to add to the list, feel free to comment. I may add more as I remember them.

Peace!

Drastic changes in the way the Ethiopian government has handled coffee export have directly impacted the lives of farmers–particularly those who own small private farms–that is, those farm that are neither large corporations nor co-operatively run.

Long story short, the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) opened in April of 2008. Its initial responsibility upon its institution was to improve market efficiency for commodity grain (commodity: that which can be treated as a perfectly competitive good) so as to set the inertial weight of an entire nation’s economy behind otherwise unstable grain prices. The opening of a commodities market in which grain prices could be set fairly firmly is indeed a logical first step–the latter steps of improving product transportation and the education infrastructure in order to include all farmers from least to greatest would necessarily follow. Whether or not they have is a legitimate question and worthy of further study.

Coffee trade was initially a part of the ECX with a proviso for specialty coffee (which doesn’t follow the same market patterns of a commodity). Earlier this year, the proviso–effectively a “second window” allowing individual export license-holders to bypass the commodity exchange system in favor of independent trade relationships–was lifted and all export licenses revoked. That which was once speciality coffee–a market niche filled primarily by small privately-owned farms (read: family farm)–will now be stripped of its origins, labeled by the standardized generic systems, mixed with other coffees that fall into the same broad categories, and sold as a commodity.

As a consequence, the latest crop of specialty coffee out of Ethiopia may be the last to reach American shores for a long time. Naturally, the coffee-consuming communities of in the U.S. are outraged, as some Ethiopian coffee ranks among the very best in the world. Worse still, the niche-market speciality growers of Ethiopia will now be forced to abandon their existing trade relationshps and the quality-improving (thus price-improving) methods by which they remained viable in the market will no longer be an asset to them. Those small farms which did not have enough market pull to bring favorable prices in a commodity environment would have previously improved their product, creating a niche environment in which they had a smaller but substantial number of niche customers with whom they could effectively bargain.

This new coffee commodification scheme has basically sunk such farmers.

It will be my goal while in Ethiopia (assuming I get to Ethiopia) to assess the social repurcussions of the ECX on individuals and families in farming communities.

This is so exciting.

I-76, the most reflective highway in America.

After spending two and a half weeks in Western PA on a whim I am about to head back east and spend a week preparing to go to east Africa for the semester. It’s important for me to revisit the places and people I have left behind and be forcibly reminded that they still live their lives outside of my often narrowly solipsist perceptions. They don’t just cease to exist when I cease to be around. Fancy that. People have changed. Places feel different. I am reminded I don’t belong, but I am always welcome; an interesting and satisfying contrast.

On top of that, I will finally have a chance to “go back” to Philadelphia and eventually to Eastern. I have a theory that you can’t call a place home until you have “gone back” to it. It seems fitting that I will finally feel as though I can go back to something after being new for a year. There will be fresher faces than mine. There will be unfamiliar things, but I might know the ropes a little better than some.

Such is college: moving upwards of 3 times a year, a barrage of intense relationships that make up for their brevity by their depth, appreciating all the wrong things and taking the right things for granted, and end it all with one of the most stomach-knotting senses of vertigo imaginable: graduation. I can hear the waters at the bottom of the cataracts, but it’s still smooth sailing for me. And yet I can’t think of a better way to end it: a semester of climax in Africa, followed by just enough time for a solid denouement to close the hero quest. Thank you Mrs. Pohlner, 12th grade English teacher.

So many thoughts about the coming semester abroad and so few that are coherent. I stand by my decision to suspend my expectations, take it as it comes, and debrief on the way home. What else can I do? No use projecting my assumptions onto a continent about which I literally know nothing. Vaguely racist as this phrase might be, “darkest Africa” has never seemed darker. I’m dreading the 20 or so hours of flying more, however.

It’s coffee time. Tazza D’oro is almost reason enough to come back to Pittsburgh.

Peace.